Teenager Timothy Doner Teaches Himself 23 Languages

Timothy Doner make look like your average American teenager, but hidden behind the quiet exterior is a fierce passion for learning and mastering different languages.

After studying for his bar mitzvah in the fall of 2009, Doner felt driven to learn modern Hebrew, so he studied more with his tutor and they begun discussing Israeli politics in the language. He then felt compelled to lean Arabic, so he attended a summer program for college students at Brigham Young University after eighth grade. He learned the full Arabic language in four days, and a week to read it fluently.

From there he learned Russian, Italian, Persian, Swahili, Indonesian, Hindi, Ojibwe, Pashto, Turkish, Hausa, Kurdish, Yiddish, Dutch, Croatian and German, learning each language by using grammar books and flash card applications on his iPhone. He started uploading videos of him speaking different languages to YouTube, and did not garner a lot of views until his Pashto video, posted on Dec. 21, got 10,000 views in two days.

Doner, and people like him, are living proof that the human brain is capable of some very amazing things.